I have a heap of images that are only very roughly organised in folders on a the PC and an external hard drive. Any suggestions as to software which can do a better job and enable me to categorise and find photos and generally tidy up my life?

I have a heap of images that are only very roughly organised in folders on a the PC and an external hard drive. Any suggestions as to software which can do a better job and enable me to categorise and find photos and generally tidy up my life?

What I highly recomend for File Management is a programme called Directory Opus.It's a replacement for Explorer like Photoshop is a replacement for Picassa. An incredible time saver. Wish I'd discovered it years ago. Probably the best programme I've ever used. Sadly not available for the Mac, which makes a Mac so slow to use in comparison as Finder is so cacky.http://nudel.dopus.com/opus9/ for a taster of what it can do - a very , very clever programme. The only down side is that it does so many things you have never used before you may miss features and setting up the preferences can take 30-40 mins as it's verrrry customisable. But you can always save your setiing and transfer to another computer no problem.Lightroom is also very useful if only for one little feature, that is invaluable in cases like yours. It can import and sort into folders by date [the best way to manage your files anyway], though as it ignores movie, sound and some types of PSDs, don't assume it's got everything. So put al your files into one big folder and import in to another folder called say Images and then it will all be arranged by date. I used LR to sort out a friends photo collection which iPhoto had scattered into lots of meaningless folders.

It's best to label the folder as well [2008-05-28 Motorshow, 2008-05-28 PR shoot, 2008-05-29 Wedding etc] and after a while you will associate shots with date, which is also handy with searching. I also put shoots into year, then month folders. 2008 2008-01- Jan 2008-01-1 New Year's Day hangover 2008-02-Feb 2008-02-03 Snowfall 2008-02-07 Dogwalk at DerwentEtcThe benefit of this folder structure is that is it OS and programme independent, very, very important. So if you go to Mac or Linux to PC from Mac, or change the software you use to look at images as say Apple have replaced Aperture or Adobe go out of business, or you find something better it will always work and always make sense.

Some screenshots showing the variety of ways you can use Directory Opus. BTW I have a lot of hard drives!

I always laugh when Adobe claim a lack of resources when their software lacks features or is full of bugs as DOpus is done by two people and it really puts Bridge to shame.You can trial it for 60 days, but it's worth every penny as it saves me so much time. Using Explorer or [spit] Finder is like running a marathon with your legs tied together in comparison.

Once you have sorted your files out, then you can start with keywording as otherwise, it'll take 10 times as long.

Opus may be OK, but what I would require is this: Ability to compare source and dest. folders several ways: 1) Show all files 2) Show all differences 3) Show differences only for files that exist in both source and dest. folders 4) Show differences only for files that exist in source OR dest.

But most important of all is scripting ability (or ability to be called from a batch file with pre-set folder names, so that (for example) 100 folders can be backed up without you having to manually find each folder, which could take a long time.

And that's why I've written utility software for 25 years or so - to automate intelligently, to prevent costly mistakes.

Opus can compare and synchronise in many different ways.http://nudel.dopus.com/opus9/page5.html#finddupefinder for a tasterThe thing I lilke best about the programme is that when you think 'wouldn't it be nice if Opus could do this', unlike other programmes you normally find out it can. And often even better than you thought.

A simple, but very effective little programme I've use on Windows is Clone 2.1 which wil simply duplicate whatever/however/whenever you want onto another drive and that's all it does, but it does do it very well. Not found a Mac equivalent as good yet.http://newtonsoftware.co.uk/clone/

You can do scripting stuff as well it seems in Opus, but for most peope they want programme to do what they want without bothering with such things. But at least the option is there.Opus is on a par with Photoshop in power terms, but is also far more customisable, so it will do what you want in the way you want and you can also have the interface you want and not what someone else has decided.

But Opus can deal with this in a much simpler manner. Say I have 20,000 images in several hundred folders backed up on DriveX from DriveY. Now imagine I mess around in say 30 folders on DriveY at random, editing lots of images from each in Photoshop. If no names have been changed, I can simply copy the top folder from DriveY to DriveX and it will only copy whatever files are different - if that's what you want. Which a lot of the time, gets rid of the need to compare folder contents as Opus deals with issue in a different, more elegant way. This assumes you are sensible enough to only ever edit on one of the two drives!http://nudel.dopus.com/opus9/page5.html#filereplaceAlso when copying folders the dialogue box that appears not only shows you what attribute is different, but also has a picture too [for images].In fact I use my PC to sort out files on my Mac [over the network] as it's so much easier using Opus than Finder or any of the half hearted Finder replacements. Hopefully using VMWare or Parallels I'll be able to use Opus from Boot Camp. That's if I don't throw the useless Mac out of my window first. Most unreliable computer I've ever used. Not unusual it seems either.

"Now, mea errata. In previous columns here [in Guardian, UK newspaper], I've complained about the instability of OS X 10.5, aka "Leopard". Turns out I was wrong. The machine I'd installed it on had a known memory board fault. Once that was fixed, the problems vanished. ("D'ya think it was tin whiskers?" asked a colleague. Well, it might have been, but how would we know?)

That though raises the question of how many other people who've had problems with Leopard actually had problems with Apple's hardware. I realised that every Apple my family has owned has had some problem - two failed logic boards, one broken Firewire port, one cosmetic crack; and a work colleague just told me of his wife's bust MacBook. Yes, a logic board again.

So when std. time changes to DST and vice-versa, and NTFS file times shift by one hour (and FAT/FAT32 files don't), does OPUS have a way to compensate so the folder compares don't show all the backed up files as different when they are not different? And BTW, without scripting or automation of some kind, the user would not find the software very useful when managing a lot of folders.

I'm coming up on the end of my 60 day trial of D. Opus as a replacement for Explorer Plus. It does some things better, some things not as well and some things are still pretty much bugs, but in no case do I see it as an image management program.

The programs I mentioned previously all are far superior as image management programs as distinct from general file management (at which Opus is very good.)

Take a look at SecondCopy, AISBackup and MOZY and you will see that backup can be handled at a superior manner at low cost - as compared to Opus. If you need to drive screws, most of the time it is better to have a real screwdriver rather than a Leatherman or Swiss Army Knife.